Most common in these ads
Goals
- Build the brand 27 ads and videos
- Sell now 6 ads and videos
- Stand for something 5 ads and videos
Industries
- Beauty and personal care 37 ads and videos
- Media and entertainment 1 ad or video
Emotions
- Amusement 10 ads and videos
- Frustration 3 ads and videos
- Anxiety 2 ads and videos
Patterns
- Iconic figure claim 8 ads and videos
- Image carries the claim 8 ads and videos
- Reason-why 3 ads and videos
The ads
Pears transparent soap ad, al-Musawwar 1945
The reader is already waiting for Pears, so the ad explains the gap: its special ingredients serve vital uses, and the favourite soap will return.
Pears soap ad: "What do you think"
A naked, grinning baby shows off the skin Pears is known for, and the ad only asks the reader what they think.
Pears transparent soap ad, al-Musawwar 1945
Pears would like to announce its return but cannot yet, because its special ingredients still serve vital uses, so it asks loyal buyers to wait.
Pears Soap advertisement, 1900
A toddler in a white dress, smudged black from spilled coal, kneels by a wash basin with a Pears tablet on the rug: the mess is the reason to wash.
Pears soap ad, al-Musawwar 1945
Pears is missing from shops only because its special ingredients serve the war, and the old friend will return to the reader's service when the war ends.
Pears' Otto of Rose soap advertisement, 1907
A smiling woman in winter furs holds up a bar of Pears beside a handwritten line about not fearing chapped skin: winter becomes the test the soap has passed.
Pears soap ad, al-Lataif al-Musawwarah 1925
A fresh young face, the famous Pears signature and a British-made soap cake sit in one line, so one Arabic claim, peerless for the complexion, is all the ad needs.
Racist Pears' Soap advertisement, 1901
A racist joke: a Black woman, copying the Pears poster on her cabin wall, hauls her screaming child to the tub while onlookers expect the soap to wash him white.
Pears soap free brilliantine offer ad, al-Musawwar 1931
Three Pears soap wrappers earn a free full jar of the new Pears brilliantine, a gift that makes buyers notice the soap's new lower price.
A baby howls and reaches from the tub for the Pears bar on the rug, then sits beaming with it: the soap is what the child wants.
Pears transparent soap ad, al-Musawwar 1936
Pears, the original transparent soap, now costs 2 piastres a cake, and because every cake is aged until hard it melts slowly, which makes it the most economical toilet soap.
Pears' Soap "This is the way we wash our hands" ad, 1888
Ordinary soaps can harm a child's delicate skin, so careful parents choose pure Pears' Transparent Soap and make washing with it a happy morning routine.
Pears transparent soap ad, al-Kashkul 1925
Pears is a soap so pure and clear that light passes through it, and the drawn box and round bar show the reader exactly which one to ask for.
Pears' Soap poster by H. Stacy Marks
Even monks sworn to plain living wash and shave with Pears' Soap, under a wall poster carrying the endorsements of Sir Erasmus Wilson and Adelina Patti.
Pears' Soap 'Scrambling for It' ad with street boys
Pears' Soap is so wanted that street boys fight over a dropped cake, and buyers should insist on it just as hard when druggists push 'just as good' substitutes.
Pears' Soap "He won't be happy till he gets it" ad
A baby leans out of his bath crying for a cake of Pears' Soap just out of reach: even an infant wants Pears'.
Pears' Soap "The Special Commission" ad
Pears puts its soap on trial before three bewigged judges, and the pun "Used by all the Best Judges" turns a roll of expert and celebrity witnesses into a verdict.
Pears' Soap gives soft, white and beautiful hands, shown by an elegant ringed hand holding up the cake itself.
Every family knows bath night, and in this one the thing the unhappy baby reaches for is the cake of Pears' Soap just out of reach.
Bath time as a household ceremony with its own order: a mother lowers her child into the tub while an open box of Pears' Soap waits on the floor.
A hundred years of unbroken popularity is the proof: our ancestors bought Pears' Soap in 1789, and travellers in 1890 still pack it for every journey.
'Tired Out' illustration from The Graphic Christmas number
Coloured and very white soaps quietly damage children's delicate skin, while Pears' Soap, pure and naturally amber, is certified safe by named chemists and skin doctors.
Soap advertisement print: You dirty boy
A scolding every household knows, 'You Dirty Boy', set under a boy being scrubbed over a washtub, makes Pears' Soap the answer to every dirty child.
Halley's Comet comes once in 75 years; Pears' Soap is visible every day all over the world, so the soap itself is drawn as the comet.
Cleanliness is the first step of the imperial mission, and Pears' Soap is its tool, from the officer's cabin basin to crates landed on foreign shores.
Pears' Soap Good Morning ad, 1889
Hitch the brand to the greeting everyone already says each morning, so "Good morning" runs straight into the question "Have you used Pears' Soap?"
Pears' Annual Christmas cover, 1899
The Pears name arrives as a Christmas gift: a lace-framed young woman fronts an annual of a new story and colour art prints, not a bar of soap.
Pears' Soap testimonial advertisement
Signed praise from Lillie Langtry and Adelina Patti frames a racist bath scene that claims Pears washes a Black child white, offered to gentlemen, ladies, children and babies.
Pears' Soap print advertisement, 1899
Soap cast as the first step of empire: Pears borrows the phrase "The White Man's Burden" and sells cleanliness as something to teach colonized peoples, a plainly racist premise.
Pears is the sovereign soap in both senses, the best soap and the king's own, and a crown set over the bar makes that visible.
A die-cut butterfly whose orange wing bands spell PEARS' SOAP, so the brand name becomes the insect's own markings and appears once on each wing.
Pears' Soap advertisement, second version
A bar of Pears' soap is shown buried in a handful of gold and silver coins, so the soap reads as worth more than the money around it.
Pears Transparent Soap "the pure Soap" advert
Pears is the pure soap, and the eye can check it: the amber cake is so clear that light passes right through it.
The ad is a keepsake: a brightly coloured die-cut butterfly with PEARS' SOAP printed as the markings on its wings, pretty enough to be kept in the house.
A fine-art painting of a child at a clear stream, with PEARS' SOAP lettered on the rock, lets purity and innocence stand for the soap without a single claim.
A shilling stick lasts twelve months, so a full year of comfortable shaving costs twelve pence.
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